The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-12-22
ORIGINALITY OF THE ENeLIsI4.

A Race which Produces Men oy Marked
Independence and axecutive Ability.
The English race is marked by tho
power Of producing independent and ex-
ecutive characters in every plane of men,
tai activity. There is no lack of great
mathematicians, great philosophers, great
poets, great naturalists, great generals.
who are distincdvely great Englishmen.
But the nation possesses. in addition, the
unique power OF producing men who ure
10 great extent detached from social
surroundings; who are not the product
OF the race nov of the day, or any Theory
Of heredity, n transmission, or enviion-
ment that is in accordance with tho
usual color cf national or social phen,m-
ena. The AVERAGE level OF the English
race is commonplace, unidcalistic. rever-
ent OF the past. unconOclasta. They arc
slow to receive distractions, to transnu nute
new general conceptions into rules Of
conduct certainly more so than tho
French, possibly more so than the Ger
mans; but in the power of producing
from time to time eccentric, unclassiiied
individuals of marked originality and in
dependence they arc distinguished from
any of the other nations which cousti-
tute what il called European civilization.
A great German rises from his fellows
in possession OF a German genius; he is o
Goethe OF Bismarck or u Helmholtz.
The only unconventional great German
man of letters that L can recall 4. present
is Heine, and Hcine is not u Gegman, but
jew of genius trying 10 be n Greek
The great Frenchmen arc also great in
the narrow limitations of French great
| ness. Powerful and original as is tho
| genius of Victor Hugo, it cannot unmoor
him from his anchorage in Psrisian
| thought. But are there any manifcsta-
ton of race development on the con-
unent that are parallel to the occult spirit
ual force which produced in England men.
of the type of Marlowe and Coleridge and
Shelley? Burns and Milton and Dryden
and Cowper are legitimate race develop
ncnts; but from what obscure regions,
from what hidden fountains of Morse or
| Celtic or Teutonic ancestry were drawn
the germs around which verc built such
minds as those of Shelley and Coleridge,
minds not only un-English, but in cer-
tain sense unearthlyl They are flowers;
| but not like the blossoms Of the century
| plant, for whose color and bloom tho
| juices have been slowly segregated by
natural laws-whose formative cell could
be discerned by the botanist's microscope
long beforeit was unfolded in the crown
ing bud. They are rather what the bot
anist calls sports-abnormal develop
ments from seed, warning us that
nature holds in restraint creative powers
for which evolution cannot account.
| The explanation of this power of the
English people may lie deef in the in
scrutable laws which Sovoiz the result
of race fusion. The islands, occupied
originally by British Celts, have been in
vaded by Angles, Danes and Norman
Franks in succession. All Of these were
races of marked individualty--of indi-
vidual force and conrasted features.
Perhaps we can say broadly that the
Celts We're, as race, imaginative, ex-
pressive. fond of color; the Angles---the
prevailing element phlegmatic, stub
born, silent, slow, but holding firmly to
the Teutonic conception of freedom for
the hndholder, and tenacious of indi-
vidual right; the Danes self reliant, en-
terprising. capable of high enthusiasin--
sons of the sea-: the Norman-F Franks, adj
ministrators, men Of affairs and polity,
men Of the world at homo in the world
of men, and inclined to social display and
elegance. Temple Bar.